280 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



architect and sculptor was the greatest painter of his time, 

 and the friend of the greatest poet ; and you have represented 

 by him a painter in his shop, bottega, as symbolic of the 

 entire art of painting. 



59. In which representation, please note how carefully 

 Giotto shows you the tabernacles, or niches, in which the 

 paintings are to be placed. Not independent of their frames, 

 these panels of his, you see ! 



Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, 

 how important also is the history of the frame maker ? It is 

 a matter, I assure you, needing your very best consideration. 

 For the frame was made before the picture. The painted 

 window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought of be- 

 fore it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the vault it adorns 

 was planned first. Who thought of these ; who built ? 



Questions taking us far back before the birth of the shep- 

 herd boy of Fesolc, questions not to be answered by history 

 of painting only, still less of painting in Italy only. 



60. And in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all 

 prove to you the essential unity of the arts, and show you 

 now impossible it is to understand one without reference to 

 another. Which I wish you to observe all the more closely, 

 that you may use, without danger of being misled, the data, 

 of unequalled value, which have been collected by Crowe and 

 Cavalcasella, in the book which they have called a History of 

 Painting in Italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of de- 

 tails relating to that history. Such a title is an absurdity on 

 the face of it. For, first, you can no more write the history 

 of painting in Italy than you can write the history of the 

 south wind in Italy. The sirocco does indeed produce cer- 

 tain effects at Genoa, and others at Rome ; but what would be 

 the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for the honour 

 of any country, assumed that every city of it had a native 

 sirocco ? 



But, further, imagine what success would attend the me- 

 teorologist who should set himself to give an account of the 

 south wind, but take no notice of the north ! 



And, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of 



